


Dragon Fire

by twowritehands



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, Thor - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being burned by Dragon Fire has turned Thranduil into a were-dragon. He cannot control when he morphs and fears he will hurt someone. But Loki has some ideas on how to keep him in line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragon Fire

_It begins with errant sparks popping out of Thranduil’s mouth as he speaks. A little fleck of light tickles down the center of his tongue and kisses off the tip to pop before his lips, a small click like from flint bringing fire. The loose flicker parting from his mouth leaves his tongue squirming behind his teeth to rid itself of the tingling sensation--or to seek in every moist space another delicious spark?_

_Next, his fingernails grow suddenly and painfully tender, a relentless pressure pushing from beneath his cuticles trying to burst out. At the same time his spine begins to itch. When his vision washes into a yellowish hue, he doesn’t have much time._

_Each breath seems to need to be bigger than the last, the air swirling into cavernous lungs. He can feel it in his throat: one little flex of a new muscle in his windpipe, and he can send more tasty sparks rolling down the center of his tongue._

_His gums ache._

**: :**

Thranduil stands in front of a looking glass, staring gauntly at his pale, jewel-eyed reflection. “Never again,” he vows in a low whisper.

The glamour-spell upon his face dissolves, transforming his thin ethereal likeness into a heinously marred monster, the image of a walking corpse. His scars are the mark left from a touch of a morgul spell, the same which has coiled so tightly around him that there is no escape from it. He is bound by puppet strings.

His one white eye, a useless orb cold as marble, is as dead as the beaten spirit which looks out of the remaining eye.

He can still taste the soot on his tongue.

Hear the roaring, popping, cracking trees ablaze with his breath.

Smell the smoke.

“Never again,” he repeats.

But it  _always_  happens again.

**: :**

_With claws it is easy to climb the ancient trees right to the top. Wingless, he cannot fly. His worm-like body craves meat, but his Reasoning has not left him so entirely that he does not know it is best to restrain and hunt only the forest animals. Therefore he preys on the birds, hungering now for the crunch of their hollow bones. The sweetness of their blood._

_From his perch in the top boughs of a tree, he can see the stars. Dragon eyes see more stars than Elven. It soothes the chaos in his wormy heart to gaze up at the speckled glittering wonder of the sky. Thus, he tries to make it a point to keep his eyes fixed on those heavenly bodies for the duration of his transformation._

_The night is silent and cool._ Maybe _, his Reason dares to hope as bulbous yellow eyes close in serenity,_ maybe this night there will be peace.

_A snap of a twig below brings his eyes wide open and a boil springs to his blood, his scales ripple. He thinks of his territory, of trespassers and death. He is in motion before he can recall Reason. He is slithering down the branches to the ground. He can hear their voices. He can smell their weak bodies._

_Sparks taste so sinfully delicious at the back of his tongue; add just a little breath and they would burst succinctly into white-hot fire of such aching beauty and pleasure. The temptation to spit fire is too great and movement in the corner of his eye brings his serpent body whirling around. He tosses his scaly head, and roars out the song of his desire. Desire to burn._

_To bring death._

**: :**

Quaking, Thranduil cleans himself in a frigid mountain pool. The water is a great relief to his overheated, flushed skin. He scrubs the soot from his teeth with shaking, boney fingers lacking all rings as they had fallen off when he morphed.

Shame weighs with suffocating pressure on his chest. It is only a stag that he has roasted, and not the innocent elven group his dragon ears had detected in his woods. Luckily, they fled upon hearing him attack the stag. But his luck will not hold, surely.

He makes his way back to the palace, and is met halfway by worried, faithful attendants who throw clothes on his back, offer food and healing spells should he need either. They do not ask questions. They act as if their king has simply been sleep-walking.

But Thranduil has not slept, and must sleep now. Alone in his chambers, he sheds the robe that had been closed around his naked body. From the shadows comes an amused voice,

“My, still not dressed at this hour?”

Frozen, Thranduil’s heart beats wildly, and he breathes, “Loki,” before he turns to perceive the god with his own eyes. Loki sits comfortably in a chair, thinner than last they met, but grinning wickedly.

The tattered memory of Loki swearing to return before the battle against the northern dragons hooks like a barb in Thranduil’s heart. Anger not only soothes the sting—but holds off any ridiculous impulse to forgive and forget. After all, Loki promised he would come and he never did; before this god ever sauntered into the wood a thousand years ago, no one had ever lied to Thranduil and survived. A glittering sword lay within reach, but Thranduil did not wish to use it. After a night of death and destruction, another bloody carcass would turn his stomach.

“Have you missed me?” Loki asks, grinning as if nothing has gone wrong in his absence.

The answer is yes, but the king asks his own question instead. “Where have you been?”

Loki winces audibly. “That… is complicated. You see—“

“I care not how  _complicated_  you think it is,” the words are sharp and loud. Thranduil’s anger has taken hold. “I asked you a question.”

“And I am answering it if you would but let me.” Loki has never bowed to the king’s rage, and he stands now spine erect and chin hard, mouth a short line. Thranduil growls as he pulls on proper sleeping attire, for there will be no carnal acts of pleasure between them after such lies.

“There is no answer you can give that will have me forget the promise you have broken,” the elf speaks coldly, for that is all he can manage by way of retribution. “You know this and so attempt an elaborate excuse. The fact is you have missed a great deal, and I hardly—“

“I was in prison, my love.” The short, clean answer stops the king’s hateful speech in his throat. He swallows hard, eyes shifting back onto Loki once more. He blinks.

“Prison,” the Elf echoes dully. It sounds rather convenient.

Loki gulps and nods. “I could think of nowhere else I would rather be than back here in your arms. That is the honest truth.”

Staunching the fear that Loki’s sweet sentiment would cease once he knew the ugly truth--the dragon’s mark on him--Thranduil asks instead, “And what world dare imprison Loki?”

“My own. Again, it is quite complicated. The short version is that my brother is a stubborn, spoiled moron, and my father favors him above me. Thor gets whatever he wants, and I get a cell.”

The eleven king’s face remains cold and stoic as he contemplates the drama of Asgard’s royal family. At length, he speaks calmly, thoughts drifting over his own duties as a king—a duty that is, as yet, mere plans halted by this morgul danger. “It is senseless to have more than one heir.”

Loki does not argue. Lifting his shoulders, he drops a hand on the ankle he has draped over one knee. “Again, my brother wanted a brother, and ta-da.”

In the silence that followed such a painstakingly light-hearted comment, Thranduil senses the infinite heartbreak masked by the display. Loki’s smile falters ever so much (a mere twitch easily misread by one unfamiliar with his expressions) and his thumb draws endless rings on the leather of his boot, betraying unease.

In an unusual show of tenderness and compassion, Thranduil extends an arm with inviting eyes, for though he does not know the reason for heartbreak, he understands his lover’s need for comfort now more so than he has ever done before… It is not easy being broken.

Loki stands quickly and comes forward as if reeled in like a fish. Thranduil turns him and holds the frail god close from behind, breathing in the smell of him, the feathery soft texture of his ink black hair. The scent of leather, heated gold, and salty musk makes his mouth water. He bites into the soft neck under his lips and Loki hisses and then hums pleasantly as Thranduil sucks.

“I am sorry I left you,” Loki whispers, body leaning into Thranduil comfortably, “I feared the worst knowing you were off to battle without me. You triumphed over the northern dragons?”

Heart jolting into his throat, the word sounds choked, “Yes.” Thranduil mutters against the sweet tasting skin.

“I wish I could have been there.”

“I too,” Thranduil admits. “For you could have saved me.”

Loki tenses, surprised, and turns in his arms. “Saved you?”

The elven king does not wish to reveal the injury and the story behind it. He does not wish to lay such a burden upon Loki’s shoulders; the fact that had Thranduil not been distracted by Loki’s unexplained absence, then he would not have caught evil dragon fire, and been stained by a morgul spell.

But the god looks upon him with such inquiring, worried eyes that Thranduil has to relate the facts. He does so in words only. Revealing the gruesome scars would only cause more damage.

They retire to bed, lying close, caressing and whispering, as Thranduil tells the tale of the dragon war. The god listens first in amazed rapture, and then in horror and sympathy. By the end of the story, the king no longer blames Loki, for he understands now that his anger had been rooted more in fear; fear that Loki would never return.

Now that he has Loki back in his arms, he cares not what happened in the past. Only that the remnants of the mistake shall forever hinder his future, unless the master of magic has a spell to break the morgul curse.

“It has taken too big a bite out of you,” Loki says, voice strained. “The only way to break the curse will be to end your life.”

Such news settles around the elven king like a light-as-air veil he has been struggling against all these years, only to finally become still and let the material settle against him like a second skin. He shall be a monster for life, then.

Loki trembles and kisses Thranduil hard, gasping against his lips, “I am so sorry, my love!”

“We will speak no more of this,” Thranduil orders at once. He cannot bare a ceremony of grief over what he has become. As if he has died.

Loki at once seems to understand without being told and silences his sorrow instantly. But he continues to ask every question a brilliant mind such as his can think to ask on becoming a dragon. Thranduil explains that it happens irregularly and that instinct takes over his mind and all that becomes important is hunger and destruction.

The elven king speaks until he no longer cares to operate his tongue or hold his eyes open, and though it has been decades since last they touched, they do nothing more than hold one another close and sleep.

**: :**

_It is still the heart of night when the king awakens, choking. He cannot breathe, for his lungs are too massive, the air in this little underground room too thin. He gasps for breath, sparks careening from his tongue. His entire body aches and he stumbles for the door. But then there is a pair of strong arms holding him upright, and the sharp, warm smell of Loki becomes a crutch under one arm._

“Fight it, my love!”

_Thranduil roars. “RUN!” The sound is not elven. Pain contorts his body, and Loki drags him further into the night. Fresh air inflates his lungs, and he can taste the starlight. Pain continues to twist around his spine, and then his vision flares yellow._

_Blind, Thranduil gallops into the wood away from any he may harm._

_When his vision returns, the transformation is complete. Thranduil stands as a nine-foot long fire serpent, with scales the color of white ash, claws the size of knives, teeth the size of daggers, and tasty sparks collecting on the back of his tongue._

_A twig snaps behind him. That amused voice, full of wonder, is somehow still too close. “Wow. My dearest, you are—“_

_Meat_   _is the only thought in the dragon's head at the sight of the god._

_Instinct lunges his massive body for Loki, and his jaws snap on thin air--Loki having barely gotten himself out of the way. Bitter rage curdles his wormy bones at having missed. He smells the meat scamper away. He can hear his dinner panting for breath as it hides its small frail form behind a tree._

_Sparks ignite on dragon tongue, and with a deep breath he relishes, even thrills, at the thought of igniting that tree and sinking teeth and claws into the meat as it flees the flames. But wait, something changes. The smell shifts. Threat comes! The shadowy shape behind the tree swells. Flame erupts, igniting the foliage._

_His dragon-gasp is an intake of not air but the flame pooled on his tongue. The glow of the Other’s fire, the billows and sensual shapes of its plumes, spill into his chaotic scaly heart, fills it with such wonder, more so than even the stars above. A roar tears from his mighty maw, a demand for more. Such beauty._

_The Other--scales of green and black and gold--tosses his reptilian head and gives an answering roar. The dragons circle one another, the world around them igniting with flames, leaves turning bright orange and then to ash, bark popping and sizzling, green wood smoking. The Other is a match in size, but he is winged, and thus stronger._

_The pleasure of intrigue and the threat the Other represents battle for dominance in him, and overwhelm him and--panicked--he snaps his sharp white jaws in another lunge. Aggression is the only way his cold heart can handle this painful need for coupling with one so strange. He lunges and swipes his claws and roars again, sending as clear a message as he can, BE GONE OR DIE._

_But the Other is not backing down; he has a strange look in his glassy green eye._

_The fire fight to follow is sensual, even to a dragon’s cold-hearted senses. The flames out of the Other’s mouth smell like mating, scorching and caressing, filled with the heat of breeding season. The winged threat moves in ways that spark alarming instinct inside his grounded scaly hide, instinct to couple, to yield, to bite, to breed._

_Desperate, terrified, he snaps his jaws, lunging for the Other, and when his teeth connect with the Other’s front paw, glancing off the thick scales, there is no shout of pain or anger, but the sound of a dragon laugh. Then, suddenly, he is captured, thrown upon his back on the ground, wormy tail flopping out of the way, opening his body up for the taking._

_The Other mounts him and instinct has him coiling against his darker mate, wrapping his white scaly arms, legs, and tail around him. Like a chameleon on a branch, he makes his wormy monstrous body cling to the underbelly of the winged dragon. The point of their coupling burns. The Other thrusts in deeply, swelling into a knot to link them together. Owned, utterly submissive, his scales begin to shimmer and shift colors to green and black and gold, marking him as one of the winged other’s harem._

_The Other suddenly spreads his massive leathery wings and, still coupled, up they go together through the foliage. Up, up, up towards the starry jewels of the night sky. Being a grounded fire worm, he has never before flown. The sensation sparks fire in him, the wild burning heart in his scaly breast bursts forth with flame into the cold night clouds around them. Such joy._

_His mate spits fire to swirl with his and they dive thousands of feet straight down in a wicked spin, each bellowing their fire so that it wraps around them and together they become a falling star streaking the sky. Fire and flight, frenzy and flame, it takes his Reason yet he is not a danger to anyone, he is free. Dizzying pleasure lulls his greedy destructive nature into a purring, content trance._

**: :**

When Thranduil wakes he is elf again, and he and Loki are naked in a thick, warm bed of ash. They have burned a clearing in the forest, providing a wide swath of sky to look down upon them. Day has come and the sky is bright blue but not yet warm. Birds sing in the surrounding trees despite the still smoldering destruction of the dragon nest.

It is but a moment of alarm finding himself so misplaced from his bed before Thranduil understands what has happened. But what is bewildering is that he is not alone. Just as he was there when Thranduil fell to sleep, Loki is by his side, fingers tucked into the crook of Thranduil’s arm as if only to reassure himself that the elf will be there as he rests.

Loki’s pale skin is warm under Thranduil’s fingers, as if the prince is straight from a steaming bath. Smoothing a hand across the soft plane of the Asgardian’s belly, he feels that impeccable skin streaked with gritty black soot and powdery grey ash. At the touch, Loki’s fingers on Thranduil’s arm turn in searching circles and his eyes work for a moment under their lids, then flutter open.

His eyes in that grey, ash-covered face are two specks of vivid green like new tender sprouts out of barren wasteland. They rove hungrily over Thranduil’s naked form, which must be no freer of the remnants of their fire than his own, though surely not as improved by them. His tongue is wickedly pink as it swipes at ashy lips.

The night before drifts in hazy patches through Thranduil’s memory.

“You stayed with me,” the elven king murmurs. It is not a question. It is an affirmation of the impossible.

“I have been parted from you long enough,” Loki whispers, eyes still eating up every small detail of Thranduil’s face as if he must learn it anew. The ash must grace his features with new contours and patterns. The Asgardian reaches as he speaks and lightly brushes something from the elf’s cheek; a painter deftly correcting a flaw in his masterpiece.

“I could have killed you,” Thranduil says bitterly, heart breaking with the sheer power of his relief that he has not.

Loki’s eyes flash and glimmer. He smirks, “I am not so easily destroyed.”

The comment strikes curiosity into the elf.  _While I have survived dragon’s fire, what has my beloved been made to suffer_? He is gaunter than Thranduil last beheld him, as if he had been starved of something more vital than food. He is also more proud, as if he wears that neglect like a badge of honor. And there is more in his eyes now, a depth that could take centuries to decode. Darkness lurks in him as if he battles with his own morgul spell.

Questions dry and stall on Thranduil’s gritty tongue. Now is not the time. He shifts in his bed of ash, banks of warm embers tickling across his shins and calves like sand.

“You made yourself a dragon,” he says by way of inquiry. They are the foulest of creatures, pure greed and destruction, heralds of blackest death. And yet Loki  _chose_  it. The god looks quite smug as he puts his hands behind his head. His pale white armpits and the patches of black hair there have not been reached by the ash.

“It is not a spell that is so very beyond a master of magic such as I.”

Thranduil takes this to mean that such a spell is actually  _very_  difficult even for a master and that much praise and devotion should therefore be given. With a sniff, Thranduil does not give it.

“Did we harm anyone?” he asks instead.

Loki shakes his head, crossing his sooty ankles and wagging his feet. “It was my own spell that changed me, thus I kept my full wits about me; worry not, my love, for I kept you in line.”

Thranduil’s attention--straying up the expanse of Loki’s naked body from his bobbing feet, to his strong thighs and winged hips--snaps back to those vivid green eyes. He remembers then, in vivid detail, the way Loki’s dragon form tempted his into submission, the way Loki became his mate and master. Indignation flares within him, “Am I a subordinate of yours to control?”

Loki’s teeth are stark white, straight and bared almost in a snarl his smile is so big and so wicked, “There is no controlling you.” Much pleased by this answer, Tranduil preens as Loki finishes, “But as a more powerful dragon it was infinitely easier to persuade you into the proper course of action.”

“Hmm, which looks to be the destruction of half my private forest.”

“Well, naturally.”

Their chuckles dwindle, and more of the night returns to Thranduil until his bewilderment gets the better of his habit of speaking only controlled sentences. “You made yourself a  _dragon_ \--but--by choice!”

Loki’s palm is warm on his cheek, the grit grating and bringing friction to the tender touch. “Whatever you are, I will be it,” Loki vows with solemnity. “No matter what form.”

Tears burn in Thranduil’s eyes. So many years and so many transforming horrors have dragged by without a single soul nearby to hold him close and make such promises; he had nearly forgotten the sweet swell of them, the eternity that lives and dies in the breath of lover’s vows. The tears burn, but do not fall. He quickly stems the emotion, or attempts to, but Loki tilts his face up, meets his eye.

Everything surpasses words and all that can transpire is for Thranduil to give himself over to it. Feeling broken under the weight of it, he crumples and curls into his lover, unable to prevent the trembling in his frame. Loki holds him for a time and then shifts, pushing himself upright to sit in their bed of ash.

“We must return. Your people will be worried for you.”

“Did they see you as a dragon?”

“I believe a few did, yes.”

Thranduil finds himself hoping that no one saw them mating--for it would be unseemly for his subjects to see their king yield to a foreign beast. They rinse their sooty bodies in a nearby brook, shivering and chuckling at the frigid temperature of the water. With a flick of his hand, Loki dresses them both in magic.

For the first time, Thranduil can return to his people with dignity. He does so, hand in hand with Loki.

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly To Be Continued....


End file.
